Susan Rice

Susan Rice Is The Wrong Person To Attack Trump’s Credibility

... falsehoods. The intervention in Libya was based upon the false assertion that Muammar Qaddafi was about to massacre tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Benghazi. Yet later in his term Obama stood by while hundreds of thousands died due to the conflict in Syria. While the initial intervention into Libya was based upon a limited mission of establishing a no fly zone, this was quickly turned into a vendetta to help the rebels remove Qaddafi. As the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi has revealed , Qaddafi was prepared to negotiate his abdication under a white flag of truce; the administration scuttled that offer. Obama was not honest about the unsigned Iran deal, either. While he claimed that this political arrangement would prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, the agreement is, in fact, designed to legitimize the ...

Trump's Words Are 'profound Danger To National Security

... Rice, who is also a former U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, said President Donald Trump's administration was undermining confidence in the U. S. by taking a "vacation from veracity.". Susan Rice Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images. In an op-ed published in the Washington Post , she said recent "false statements" about wiretapping that led to public criticism from Britain's spy agency were part of a "disturbing pattern of behavior that poses real and potentially profound dangers to U. S. national security.". She wrote: "When the American people question the commander in chief's statements, his ability to harness public support to confront a national crisis is undermined.". Rice, a Rhodes scholar who was confirmed as an ambassador by unanimous consent, warned that Washington's world standing was being harmed. Related: Trump's Black Caucus Remarks Were 'Offensive,' Rice Says. "The foundation of the United States' unrivaled global leadership rests only in part on our military might," she wrote. "It is also grounded in the perception that the United States is steady, rational and fact-based.". She added: "To lead effectively, the United States must ...

Remember When Susan Rice Said She Knew Nothing Of The Trump 'unmasking

... "So, today, I really don't know to what Chairman Nunes was referring, but he said that whatever he was referring to was a legal, lawful surveillance, and that it was potentially incidental collection on American citizens.". The former national security adviser went on to criticize the president's highly contested claim that former President Obama had Trump Tower's "wires tapped" during the 2016 election. However, the Bloomberg report published Monday casts doubt on her flat denial that she knew anything about the intelligence activities surrounding Trump and his people. "The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on 'unmasking' the identities of individuals in the U. S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally," the report read, citing multiple anonymous officials. The person who discovered that Rice had made several "unmasking" requests was reportedly Ezra Cohen-Watnick , who was brought into the Trump administration by retired Gen. Michael Flynn. Flynn resigned just a few weeks into his ...

Trump Steps Up Effort To Dispute And Distract On Russia

... of state, a role that gave her ample reasons to have frequent contacts with Russia. To deflect questions about Trump's friendly rhetoric toward Russia, the White House points to the fact that Clinton was a central figure in the Obama administration's attempt to "reset" relations with Moscow — an effort that crumbled after Vladimir Putin took back the presidency. "When you compare the two sides in terms of who's actually engaging with Russia, trying to strengthen them, trying to act with them, trying to interact with them, it is night and day between our actions and her actions," Spicer said. Rex Tillerson, Trump's secretary of state, has deep ties to Russia from his time running Exxon Mobil and cutting oil deals with Moscow. The White House has also tried to link Clinton to Russia's purchase of a controlling stake in a ...

Covering Trump Surveillance Story Helps Russia ‘undermine’ American Democracy

... activities. TUR: As the acting National Security Adviser at the time, isn’t it perfectly routine for her to ask to unmask names so she can see them, so she can better understand an investigation that is ongoing. LAKE: Well, if it was about Russia, but remember, the original claim from Chairman Nunes was that these reports had nothing to do with Russia. And in addition to that, it really depends on the context. I mean, yes, it’s true that you can have senior political appointees unmasking incidental collection like this if there were sort of a pending terrorist attack or some sort of – you know, a server was taken over by bots in a cyber attack of some sort like that. So that sort of thing happens, but, you know, the bar is pretty low. Is there sort of a foreign intelligence, you know, value to any of this? Which could mean just about anything. And in this particular case, it ...

Experts Say Susan Rice Had Every Right To Request ‘unmasking’ In Intel Reports

... that the NSA follows. There are various levels of intelligence information in terms of sensitivity, in terms of classification that various people in Congress and the White House are given exposure to,” Lerner told TPM. “And it’s difficult for someone who doesn’t work for that agency to figure it out.”. Lonergan charged that Nunes was himself “leaking classified information” when he went to the press with his initial claims that Trump staffers’ identities had been unmasked and widely circulated within the intelligence community. She said intelligence and national security officials who are required to remain mum about the information they receive are now “clashing” with politicians accustomed to speaking to the public about what they know. “A lot of people who know what’s actually going on don’t talk about it because they’re not supposed to talk about it,” she said. “And then you get the politicians out talking about it in very broad, ...

Susan Rice Prompted Trump Aides' Unmasking In Intel Reports

... team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration. The individual leading the NSC review was the council’s senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, according to the report. Cohen-Watnick was recently reported  to be one of three White House staffers who allegedly played a role in providing House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) with intelligence reports in which Nunes claimed Trump transition officials’ identities were inappropriately unmasked. That revelation burned Lake, who had reported that Nunes told him his source was an intelligence, not White House, official. “He misled me,” Lake wrote of the California lawmaker last week. Rice did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment. In an interview last month on “PBS News Hour,” Rice said she knew “nothing” about reports that Trump and his transition officials were swept up in foreign surveillance. “I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that account,” she said at the time. Reports that Rice prompted the unmasking of Trump ...

Van Jones Slams Jason Miller For Susan Rice ‘smear

... serious issue with the possibility that the president’s campaign was colluding with Russia.”. Miller argued that the length of time the FBI has been investigating Trump’s ties to Russia proves there’s no “there” there. “If they’ve been looking at this for eight months and they still haven’t found anything, I think it’s really questionable if they ever will,” Miller said, “But what we do know about is Susan Rice … was systematically going through and on numerous occasions was unmasking American names, disseminating that information—“. “No, no, no no—that is not true. Don’t do that! That is not true buddy,” Van Jones replied. “It looks very questionable,” Miller tried to continue. “It’s a complete smear,” Van Jones shot back. “You can’t come on the air and say that Susan Rice has disseminated anything. Nobody has said that on planet Earth except for ...

Why This Former Obama Staffer Is At The Center Of Right Wing Conspiracies

... more intel or info about intel is routine.or was routine when we had Admin that valued objective info. Also: Unmasking ≠ Leaking __link__/c SEigu JAhx. — Graham Brookie (@Graham Brookie) April 3, 2017. The story was quickly picked up by a slew of right-wing media sites as "proof" that Trump was right about the wiretapping — and that the Obama administration had been conspiring to spy on Trump and gather damaging intelligence on his campaign. Hasn't Susan Rice been a right-wing punching bag before. Rice was already a familiar figure to readers of far-right news outlets as the Obama administration official who went on the Sunday talk shows after  the Benghazi attack and blamed the incident on rage sparked by a You Tube video. Later analysis showed Rice was simply disseminating the administration's understanding of the situation at the time, which turned out to be incorrect, but she became a target for those who believed there was cover-up related to the 2012 attack in Libya, which ...

Susan Rice On Trump's Wiretapping Claim

... real and potentially profound dangers to U. S. national security,” Rice wrote. In the PBS News Hour interview, Rice, who served as the U. S. ambassador to the United Nations during Obama’s first term, said the world was watching Trump’s presidency closely. “I think the world is not impervious to what happens here in the United States,” Rice said. “On the contrary, they watch it very, very carefully.”. Her remarks came shortly after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) met with Trump at the White House to discuss the panel’s investigation into Russia’s influence on last year’s presidential race. Nunes told reporters after the meeting that Trump and some of his campaign officials were the subjects of ‘incidental collection’ during legal U. S. surveillance efforts of foreign targets in the months following the election. Congressional Democrats criticized Nunes’ decision to meet with Trump. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the meeting raised doubts about the House Intelligence chairman’s ability to conduct an independent investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump ...

Rush Limbaugh Rips ‘unmasking’ By Susan Rice, Says Obama ‘weaponized Everything’ To Destroy Trump

... foreign actors that they knew Trump transition people would be talking to and learned what they were saying that way. And that’s why Rice was requesting that these people be unmasked so that she and Obama and whoever else in this operation would understand who was being talked about and who was saying what. …”. “The scandal is not Trump and the Russians,” he continued. “The scandal is the Obama administration and these embeds in the deep state surveilling targets with the express purpose of hoping to capture Americans as part of the surveillance.”. Ms. Rice did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment on Monday. She had previously told PBS’s “News Hour” in March that she knew “nothing” about the issue. “Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends,” Mr. Trump tweeted Monday. ‘Spied on before nomination.’ The ...